Government will hire 35,000 teachers to bridge existing shortage

The government seeks to employ 35,000 more teachers by September even as it assured that Grade Seven pupils will continue learning as the challenge is sorted out.

President William Ruto has said that he will gradually fill the 110,000 teacher shortage and has already scaled up the number to be employed annually.

For Junior Secondary Schools (JSS), he said the government is in the process of identifying more teachers who have diploma qualifications in primary and promote them to JSS.

“We are identifying teachers with diplomas so that we can post them to JSS because we have more in the primary section. We want to promote those in primary to cover the gap and when we move to this new budget, maybe towards September, we can then be able to hire,” said Ruto, in a televised interview.

He assured the Grade 7 learners will continue learning because the Government has made temporary interventions.

“For JSS learners, the Government has made an intervention because part of the problem was that some primary schools did not have enough students to qualify to host the junior school. We are trying to see how we can put together some of the institutions,” explained Ruto, adding that he made a decision to hire 35,000 teachers at once, the largest ever because there was urgent need.

The human capital

“We used to hire 5,000 every year and I have scaled it up to 35,000 and another 35,000 next year but I have to operate within a budget. I need the resources. But when I try to raise the money, you guys make noise that I am raising taxes but you still want children to get their education, we have to balance these things.”

The president said that when he came into office, he found a big crisis that led him to appoint the presidential working party to look at reforming the education sector.

He insisted that education is the most important instrument of shaping the country’s human capital and the future, adding that education sharpens them, right from primary school.

“I appointed the working group to work on education and I made certain decisions. I reversed that these kids go to secondary schools because there was need for an extra classroom when there was already an extra classroom in primary. It would have been a bigger crisis if we would have gone down that route,” he explained.